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Commodore Disk
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A History of Data Formats
Whilst arranging my old belongings in preparation for moving home I came across an old computer cassette that I created years ago for a covertape which was to be given away with a fanzine I used to edit when I was younger. The publication focused on the retro Commodore 64 computer and every issue we would put either a 5¼" floppy disc or cassette (depending on whether or not the customer owned a floppy drive) filled with game demos on the front cover.
With this standard audio cassette filled with ancient games in my hand I glanced across at a BluRay disc on my desk and realised quite how far storage media had progressed in recent years. At the time I thought that this week it would be a nice idea to have a brief stroll down memory lane together to recap on the formats of yesteryear:
Punch Cards ' Even though they have existed for literally hundreds of years (used in the past in a mechanical capacity on textile looms, fairground organs etc), punch cards found a use in the first half of the 20th century in both data entry and storage. This information was recorded by the occurrence, or even lack of a punched holes in a certain positions on pieces of stiff card. While fairly tricky to store and awkward to use, these cards were exceptionally widely accepted and implemented in the early days of computing.
Tape formats - Tape formats have been around for decades in digital computing and indeed still remain in use to this day especially when backing up large quantities of data. Of particular interest to me is the recording data on conventional audio tapes which occurred mainly through the mid 70's and into the 80's. Due to the cost conscious nature of home computer users at the time, many computers were equipped with analogue to digital converters so that binary instructions could be altered into noise and stored on to a standard audio cassette. An old 56k computer modem works on much the same principal to transmit digital data down a phone line designed to carry sound.
8-inch Floppy Disc ' First commercially available in 1971 they initially had a miniscule capacity of just 79kb and were then outdated by coming of the 5¼" floppy disc when the preceding format was largely abandoned for being too large to be practical. These formats both used discs that really were floppy; their flexible nature and nominal shielding from the rest of the world made them a somewhat unsafe format to store precious data on.
3.5" Floppy Disc- Whilst several sizes were developed to replace the 5¼" drive, it was the 3.5" floppy that was widely adopted and became commercially successful. Whilst the storage medium is actually floppy it was protected by a rigid plastic outer shield. Despite being introduced back in 1984 it was remarkably still relatively popular up until a few years ago.
Floppy Replacements - The bog standard 3.5" floppy disc was limited to 1.44mb capacity and as time went on this became considered as an unmanageably small capacity. Several alternatives were subsequently invented including Flextra (1988), Floptical (1991), Zip (1994), LS-120 (19950, HiFD (1997) and UHD144 (1997) regrettably for their devopers despite the higher capacity, improved speeds and useful backwards compatibility, a series of issues resulted in these formats never truly establishing themselves as an industry 'standard'.
It wouldn't feel right not giving Refresh a little plug at this point since storage media is a huge element of our business and on items such as CD's, DVD's and Flash Drives I feel that we cannot be beaten locally on price. With regards to covering history post floppy disk, I have written several articles regarding newer optical media such as CD's and DVD's in the past which can be downloaded at www.computerarticles.co.uk.
About the Author
Chris Holgate writes a weekly article of all things tech related. He is a director and copyrighter of the online computer consumables business Refresh Cartridges who sell cheap ink cartridges ,toner cartridges,
computer hardware
and other computer consumables online. An archive of his work can be found at
www.computerarticles.co.uk
.
vx commodore rear brakes?
Hi all
This is the first time i have owned a car with 4 wheel disk brakes. my question is how do i reset the piston in the rear calipers as i need to change the pads, as far as i can see there are no slots on the piston to wind the piston back in. i tried breifly to push the piston back in using a g clamp but didnt want to force it bacause i know it can do damage. any tips will be greatly appriciated.
the only way is to use a clamp use the old pad as a brige across the piston set the g clamp in the middle and screw down evenly some times they are a bit tight remember once you have replaced pad to bed them in so they dont sqeal when you apply the brakes, to do this get car upto speed then apply the brakes slowly
Commodore 64 Returns as Retro Windows 7 PC
The Commodore 64 is back, after a US company announced plans to release a PC resembling the classic computer featuring Intel dual- or quad-core processors.
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